Matchmaker Matchmaker
by starlight.moon.princess
Summary: When he woke, he could immediately see the flashes of red. It took him longer to understand what they meant, but when they did, he knew why he couldn't see his own. After all, the person at the end of his string had been dead for the better part of a century. He'd contented himself with having no red string - he just hadn't counted on HYDRA getting in the way. Stucky Red string!AU


He knew what the psychiatrists they sent him to wrote down. They were wrong, all of them. For all their education, none of them knew how to read him. He was still the war hero, and they were far too preoccupied with that to see what the Commandoes would have noticed with their eyes closed.

But then, that was part of the problem. He was grateful to SHIELD for finding and reviving him – of course he was – but by they time they managed to do that, most of the Howling Commandoes were long dead, and Howard wasn't any better than them. Peggy was alive, of course – everyone had known that she would live the longest of them all – but she had changed, changed enough that it felt like she was gone too. No matter how many times he visited her, no matter what they spoke about, he would never have his Peggy back.

And so he was left, adrift and lost in a world he didn't understand.

SHIELD had tried to break the news to him gently. He had been confused enough when he first woke that they believed they had succeeded. Another obvious lie that no one was left to see through.

He hadn't known how far in the future he had awakened, just how much had changed – but he had known that something was different. The flashes of red that he had seen when he first opened his eyes had been confirmation enough.

He hadn't realised what they meant when he had seen his first thread, coiled tightly around the finger of the man he would later come to know as Agent Coulson, and he had been too lightheaded to question him about it. As it turned out, that had been a good thing.

He had realised almost immediately that nearly every single person in the room with him had a thread around their fingers. Most weren't bound as tightly as the one Coulson had, but they were there. And the way that they were walking over the bits of the string that trailed on the floor without impeding the people to whom they belonged told Steve that they most probably couldn't see – or feel, he guessed – them the way he could.

He understood. He had never seen them during his first life either.

At first, he kept the knowledge of them quiet simply because he didn't know what they were. The scientists at SHIELD were having slightly too much fun with him as it was, and he didn't want to give them something else to bother him over. Nor did he want people to think he was insane, a scenario that was almost disturbingly likely if they didn't believe him and send him to the people in the lab coats. After all, Fury had seemed almost disappointed that he wasn't slightly more angry or violent or downright sociopathic – apparently, having all the stories be true wasn't always a good thing.

And once he had figured it out – the first time he had seen Agents Coulson and Barton in the same room as one another, it had been pretty obvious – he had kept it to himself for reasons of his own. He was grateful for the welcome he had been given – but none of them were the Commandoes. They weren't Howard, or Peggy, or, most importantly, Bucky. Those were the people he wanted to tell, not Nick Fury and Maria Hill.

Besides, he was almost certain he knew where his – stubbornly invisible to him – string ended, and that was not a thought he wanted to be reminded of.

No, his knowledge was best kept hidden.

* * *

><p>"You aren't going to tell them," he said. It wasn't a question.<p>

Nick Fury knew better than to ask him how he knew Coulson wasn't dead.

He might have believed the lies, had he not seen the string still bound tight around Barton's finger – hours after Coulson was supposed to have died.

"They needed the motivation."

Steve didn't reply. Fury was right, of course – and at the same time, he couldn't help but feel that there was more that he wasn't telling him. He had spent enough time among bureaucrats before he had been frozen, and they were the one thing that hadn't changed over the decades.

He didn't know what Fury meant to do with the secret, but it was obvious that he wasn't going to reveal it even after the world was saved. And maybe he had a good reason for that – one that would end up saving lives – but Steve had seen the beauty of the red strings, and he wasn't willing to let anyone alter the most tightly wound pair he had ever come across.

"If you don't tell them after the battle, I will." It was a promise, and one Fury knew he would keep. And perhaps in saying those words, Steve had changed the course of the future in a way that it shouldn't have been, but as far as he was concerned, it was the correct decision.

And the looks on the faces of the team – especially Agent Romanoff, and, of course, Clint Barton – when Coulson walked into the shawrma restaurant, as healthy as he had been the last time they had all seen him, told him that he had been right.

Though…he wasn't really too sure why Coulson and Barton insisted on engaging in some rather – well, _indiscreet_ – acts in front of them. There were some things that he really did not wish to see.

* * *

><p>"So. Would you like to tell me exactly how you knew that Coulson was alive moments after Fury informed us of his apparent demise?"<p>

He simply raised an eyebrow, and stared back at Tony, nonplussed. "I don't know what you're talking about."

"You do know that I have my own surveillance cameras all over the Hellicarrier, don't you?" It was obvious that he was rather put out by Steve's underestimation of Tony's genius.

"I don't even want to know how you mana-"

"Fury should have known better than to ask me to build the place and expect that I wouldn't make my own additions to the design," Tony said, interrupting his muttered words. "Don't think I haven't noticed the fact that you still haven't answered my original question, by the way. How did you know?"

"No one else could know- Fury was right, the team needed the-"

"I'm not arguing with that, Cap. As much as it pains me to say it, I agree with you. Fury _was_ right, and we _did_ need the shock." Tony's voice was uncharacteristically serious as he said that. "I'm not really too pissed over the fact that we were kept in the dark. I'm just curious as to how you managed not to be fooled."

Steve sighed. The briefing on Tony had warned him about his uncanny ability to imitate a dog in its stubbornness to let go of a bone when he was faced with information he wanted but could not immediately access. Not that that had been strictly necessary – he remembered Howard as being exactly the same.

He wouldn't have been able to get away from Howard's prying, and he doubted he would manage that with Tony either. At least in telling him, he kept some connection to the people who he had lost – in many ways, the rest of the team had slowly become just like the Commandoes. And he had no doubt that Tony would end up telling them, even if he managed to keep his mouth shut for a few days before he did that.

It looked like his secret was out.

* * *

><p>"So you're saying that everyone has a red string wound around one of their fingers? And you believe that that string leads to the finger of the person they're destined to fall in love with?" To Tony's credit, he had managed to keep every hint of incredulity out of his voice as Steve told him his story.<p>

"I don't know," he replied, shrugging. "There is just too much that I don't know about the strings. I do know that it has something to do with love, but whether it has something to do with destiny? I don't know. Maybe it's just a reflection of a person's free will – maybe it simply shows how strong a romantic relationship at any given moment in time, and maybe it changes where it leads as a person falls in and out of love. But what I _do_ know is that – from what I've seen – it always connects two halves of a couple, or a pair that will soon become romantically involved."

"Had you told me any of this before Thor, I would have called you crazy," Tony said distractedly, his fingers running rapidly over the screen of his computer. "But it does make sense in the context of Thor – if Norse mythology is real, why shouldn't the rest of the world's myths and legends be real too?"

"I'm starting to get used to feeling completely lost whenever you're around."

"Don't look so disgruntled, that happens to everyone. Except for Brucie, of course, but it's pretty hard to get lost when you turn into a green rage monster that can probably be spotted from outer space. Not the point."

He sighed. "And what exactly _is_ the point?"

"Well, there are a couple," Tony said, shrugging. "The first is that you somehow seem to be the only person on record who can see a Japanese slash Chinese – wherever the myth originated – myth brought to life. Also, who says romantically involved anymore? And now that I finally, Agent's been involved with Barton for _how_ long now? And they told us it was recent. So what about the violinist? Was she just a figment of his imagination or is there some after-hours liaising going on between him, her and the Avengers' pet hawk? So many questions, so little time."

"Tony," he replied, a sigh of frustration escaping him.

"Alright, alright, no need to get your panties in a bunch, Cap. What I'm getting at is that, while interesting and useful for gossip, as far as I can see, that's the only use for your newfound abilities at the moment. Perhaps it will come in useful in the future, but that isn't something I can predict, sadly. So you really don't need to tell anyone else about this unless you want to."

Steve threw Tony a doubtful look. "What about-"

"As much as I would love to mention this to Clint and Coulson, Pep and Brucie will murder me if I let this out without you agreeing to it," Tony muttered, a petulant look on his face. "So you don't need to worry your pretty little head about it – your secret's unfortunately safe with me."

Steve made a mental note to buy both Pepper and Bruce gift baskets from one of those shops that had expensive body-care items the next time he went to the mall.

"That leads us to our next problem, though," Tony said, interrupting the moment of relief that he was experiencing. "What exactly do you want to do with this? You could become the best matchmaker in the country with this – I'm sure the ones that hound me to become their client would kill to have this ability. You could probably even make enough to rival me, though that would mean quitting being an Avenger and becoming a matchmaker fulltime, of course."

He sighed. "Tony…"

"Yeah, yeah, I know that you're never going to stop being part of the good fight. And that you won't charge anyone anything if do plan on going into the matchmaking business, but hey, a guy can dream, can't he? Still, the question remains."

"I don't know," Steve said, shrugging self-consciously. "For the moment – for the moment, I'd definitely prefer that this be kept a secret. I don't want to deal with the questions, and truth be told, I'm more than happy to let Fury keep wondering how I knew about Agent Coulson."

That, at the very least, made Tony's eyes light up with an unholy glee. "Of all the things you could have said, Cap, that's the one thing that will always manage to convince me. This is going to _so_ much fun," he concluded, rubbing his hands in a way that reminded Steve disturbingly of a cartoon villain.

As he wandered off to tinker with something in his workshop, his attention span finally wavering from the mystery that Steve had presented him, he sighed. At the very least, he could be sure that there would be no revelation of his new sight at the breakfast table tomorrow, even if the days of it being a secret were now numbered – and really, knowing that there seemed to be some precedent for it, even if it was in myths and legends, _was_ comforting.

For what seemed to be the millionth time since he had woken in a new millennium, he couldn't help but wonder what Bucky would have thought of it all.

* * *

><p>The best thing about being part of a team of superheroes was that they didn't react much when faced with something completely out of the ordinary.<p>

He had been right – Tony _hadn't_ been able to keep his mouth shut for long. He'd blurted it out during one of the team movie nights that he had insisted on instituting.

Steve had been ready for it since Tony had first told him that he knew something, but he had still been slightly nervous. He had no idea how they would take it – after all, in a way, he could see into their souls to see who they were best matched with, and he wouldn't blame them if they thought that that was far too invasive.

But they had just nodded before returning to the movie. Well, Natasha had warned him never to consciously look for the one she was bound to, and Clint had thanked him for making sure that Fury let Coulson out – how he had figured that out, Steve didn't know – but that had been it for the moment.

Bruce had found him later, letting him know that he was there if he ever wanted to research his ability further. He was the only scientist that Steve wasn't leery of, and his offer had meant a lot.

(At least he knew what he give him in return. He'd kept his mouth shut with Tony, because he hadn't been sure, but now that he had seen the two of them together when he wasn't in the middle of a battle or recovering from it – well, he suspected that even if Bruce wouldn't want to accept it at first, Tony would be persistent enough for the both of them.)

He still didn't know what Thor thought about it – the god was still in Asgard – but that was one reaction he wasn't worried about. From what he had seen of him, he would probably just thump his back in the way he seemed to like to do and offer to share a pop-tart with him.

He still missed Bucky – there was no one who would ever be able to take his place, no matter how long he lived, he knew that – but the hole left by the Commandoes and Howard had grown a little less heart-breaking at the reactions of his new team, and it was a little easier for him to remember the good times he had with them instead of regretting all the time he had lost.

* * *

><p>The moment he could finally see the red string wound around his own finger had been like a jolt to his entire system. He wanted nothing more than to follow it – to see how it was even possible, because the person he <em>knew<em> he would find on the other end was dead, and there was no one else who would be as perfect.

He wanted to rage, to find the person who dared to think that they could live up to the man he had left behind, but he knew he couldn't. There was no one who could prevent what was happening apart from Natasha and himself – the others were all busy with missions or new super-villains, and HYDRA had to be dealt with.

After – after, though, he would search. For now, he could afford neither the hope nor the rage that had sprung up with the string.

Of course, hoping his life would be that simple had been a mistake. He had been right in what he had known instinctively as soon as he had been awoken – there had only ever been one person who was capable of being on the other side of his string, and he had failed him utterly and completely. To think of him being tortured the way he had, for the better part of a century…it was more than he could bear.

If it weren't for the fact that Bucky needed him now, he would have destroyed what remained of HYDRA with his bare hands. There were some things – some people – that were off limits, and they should have remembered that. As it was, Bucky's need had only bought them some more time. They were still living on borrowed time, and if it was the last thing he would ever do, Steve swore he would remind them of that soon.

For now, however – for now, he had to bring his best friend back to life.

* * *

><p>"Y'know, if I didn't know you so well, I'd think you were insane."<p>

"If I didn't now I wasn't insane, I'd think I was insane too," Steve said in reply.

"You have to admit, it all sounds a bit unbelievable. At the least the serum was something that we could understand, if not figure out. But since when do people wake with the ability to see invisible strings?" Bucky demanded.

"Since when do people wake up at all after being frozen for seventy-odd years?" Steve asked instead of replying.

"Good point."

They sat there in silence for a few moments, and Steve couldn't help but think back on everything that had happened since he had first discovered that Bucky was still alive. It hadn't been easy for them – there were still parts of him that hadn't come back, even though he had been free of HYDRA and that chair for half a year.

According to Bruce and Tony, there was a chance that they would never come back. Even the brain could only recover from so much, and what Bucky had been through should have erased all of him, not just some. If it had been someone other than Bucky, Steve knew that it would have done just that – Bucky was the strongest person he knew, and there was no one else, not even him, who he thought could withstand being wiped as many times as Bucky had without disappearing completely.

Bucky disagreed, of course, but Steve knew better. His best friend was too wracked by guilt to be able to see the truth clearly, but he could.

Bucky always was and always will be the best man he has ever known.

Still, despite it all, it had taken him the better part of three months to convince Bucky to step down from the ledge that HYDRA had forced him on. Three months to convince him that was still the same Bucky that Steve had always known.

And after that, it had taken the same amount of time to condition – and he hated that word – Bucky to the modern world. He might have been awake for longer than Steve had, but that had only been for bursts of time when HYDRA needed him. It had only been recently that the Bucky Steve remembered had started to poke out from beneath the layers of shields that he had built up over the years, the ones HYDRA probably didn't even know he had built to protect himself from going mad from what they had forced him to do.

The past six months had been some of the most difficult of Steve's life, but to see Bucky in front of him, the same as he was in Steve's memories – he would go through everything he had a million times over, and he would still think that it was worth it.

"And you said that this was what convinced you that I was still there?" Bucky asked, breaking the silence between them. "That I was still more than-" here he hesitated, before pushing forward, "the Winter Soldier?"

It was obvious how much saying the name that HYDRA had given him hurt him, but Steve pretended that he hadn't seen it. Bucky never had been good with sympathy – he always saw it as pity, and hated it. Instead, he nodded in reply to the question.

"It - Mi – Yours wasn't withered," he finally said, stumbling over his words. Tony had called him a coward for now telling Bucky the truth about their strings, and he agreed – but he didn't know how Bucky would react. Had this been seventy years ago, and Bucky had been without the shadows in his eyes, he wouldn't have hesitated. But as much as he wanted to pretend otherwise, he knew that there were some parts of Bucky that he no longer understood – that he would possibly never understand.

He was a coward, but that was better than losing the only person who kept him anchored. It was better than losing the person he would destroy the world to make happy.

"What does that have to do with anything?"

"Rumlow – Rumlow's was dead," Steve said, the horror of the sight bleeding into his words. "When he turned completely – when he tried to kill me – it died fully. That's how I knew that he was gone. Whoever his string was linked to, they wouldn't have been able to accept who he had become. The strings themselves couldn't accept that contradiction, and they died. Yours didn't."

"So if Rumlow's soulmate, or whatever you called it, had been as crazy as him, nothing would have happened to the string?" Bucky asked.

"I'm not sure, but I don't think it would have. After all, from what I could see, Fury's seemed to be fine, and I know that Pierce's was too. And neither of them are – were, for Pierce, I guess – people I can just anyone accepting." He was well aware of just what he was on the verge of revealing, but he had never been able to lie to Bucky when he asked him something directly.

Bucky hummed in agreement, before falling silent. He knew him – knew exactly where his mind had gone – and he braced himself for the next question.

Sure enough, he looked at Steve speculatively before asking, "What if the person I'm bound to had been as nuts as the Soldier? Why didn't you think of that?"

Steve could hear the undertone of anger in that question. He knew it was because of the risk that Bucky thought he had taken – he had never been able to stop thinking of him as the kid fighting off bullies twice his side. But here, at least, he had gotten into the fight _knowing_ that he wasn't in any danger.

"I know who it is," he finally said, when Bucky started to open his mouth to scream at him.

He only raised an eyebrow in reply. "They're too good for the likes of me, I guess?" he asked, faint resignation in his voice. "Don't worry Stevie, I won't ask you who they are."

"It's not like that!" he exclaimed. He had always hated it when Bucky put himself down, and that was something that had increased when he had returned to him. He understood it now, of course, but that didn't mean that he agreed with it. "It's just-" he hesitated. "Don't be upset with me, please," he finally said, wincing internally at the note of desperation he could hear in his own voice.

Bucky looked at him like he had lost his mind. "What're you on about, you punk? You know that I could never hate you."

"I didn't not tell you who it was because you're not good enough," he explained haltingly, refusing to look at him. He didn't know what Steve was about to reveal, so he couldn't believe Bucky when he said he wouldn't hate him. Not unless he felt the same after he knew. "I didn't tell you because I didn't know how you'd react – I don't want you to hate me for it."

'Steve, even if you tell me that my other half is supposed to be Schmidt, I won't hate you," Bucky said, impatience clear on his face. "You're not the one who decides who matches whom, so how can it be your fault?"

He sighed and shut his eyes, unwilling to look Bucky in the eyes when he told him. "It's- me. The other of end of your string, it's tied to me," he muttered, trying hard not to think of Bucky's reaction.

The fact that he didn't reply to Steve's words, not for what felt like a million years, only seemed to confirm his fears. "I'm sorry," he said miserably, still unable to force himself to look at his best friend, "I know you probably don't want this-"

And before he could say anything else, Bucky's hand was over his mouth, silencing him. "Look at me," he said gently instead of the multitude of words Steve expected he wanted to say.

He didn't want to – oh, he didn't want to see the hatred in his eyes. But he had never been good at denying him anything that he could give. He'd been wound around Bucky's little finger since the day they met, and this time wasn't any different than the million other times he had given in to Bucky's requests and demands.

He opened his eyes to see Bucky smiling fondly at him. "You're the same punk you were seventy years ago, aren't you?" he murmured. "The same idiot you were then."

"Buck?" He was utterly confused. This wasn't the anger and fury that he had expected – this was Bucky acting like he hadn't revealed anything life-changing at all.

"Why would I be upset that you're my soulmate?" Bucky demanded, staring at him once more like he had gone insane. Rising from the floor where he kneeling, he nudged Steve to create some space for him in the armchair he was seated in. After he had managed to wedge himself into it, he continued, "Of all the people in the world, I'm the only person who knows how to deal with you, anyways. It's probably for the best that no one else will have to learn how to handle your stupid self-sacrificing moments – they'd probably go insane."

That was enough for him to crack a smile. He could see the doubts written across Bucky's face as clear as if he'd spoken them aloud, but he appreciated the fact that he was taking the time to calm him down. And, truth be told, he _did_ believe Bucky when he said that he had no problem with the situation that they were in.

Before he could ask him exactly what those doubts were about, Bucky started to speak again. "Truth be told, I'm surprised you're willing to put up with me," he said, and in that moment, Steve could see the doubts emerge all the clearer. "I know that you said we're meant to be or something, but I'm sure that just about any dame – or guy, if that's what you want – would be willing to take you in. why you'd want my sorry ass is what-"

"I love you," Steve interrupted, unable to hear Bucky's stupid self-sacrificing offer any more. "_I love you_, Buck. I think I've always loved you, since before. When I woke, you were the one I missed more than anyone else. The Avengers – I can almost pretend that I didn't lose the Commandoes when I'm with them, but I could never forget that I lost you before anyone else. And I know that you never felt the same way, and-"

This time, it was Bucky's turn to interrupt. Only he had always been the man of action between them, and his interruption wasn't in the form of words, but of his lips on Steve's.

"I've loved you since the moment I saw you, you punk," Bucky whispered against his lips, before returning to kissing him. This time, Steve didn't feel the slightest need to interrupt him.

Sure, they had things to talk about. But they had all the time in the world – probably even literally, considering the serum that ran through both of their veins. For the moment, Steve was happy to indulge himself and ignore the responsible thing to do for once.

* * *

><p>"You know, Cap, there's a reason I installed a sound-proofing feature into all the Avengers' floors," Tony commented when Steve walked into the communal kitchen for breakfast. "I mean, don't get me wrong, I'd have appreciated the surround sound display a couple of years ago, but Brucie here-"<p>

"If you know what's good for you, I'd suggest you didn't finish that sentence, Tony.'

'Whatever you want, Brucie-poo," Tony grinned cheekily.

Before Steve could throw the scone in his hand at Tony's head, Thor slapped his back. "I must offer you my congratulation, good Captain, for taming one as wild as James Barnes."

Natasha fixed him a glare from where she was sitting. "We'll be having a conversation about this, Steve, even if I have to postpone my next mission."

"No postponing mission, Natasha," Coulson said, calmly biting into the apple in his hands.

"You know, a couple of those positions sounded pretty interesting," Clint mused from where he was sitting at Coulson's side. "I should see if Barnes is willing to compare notes one of these days…"

"Sniper competition. You beat me, we'll talk," Bucky said, walking out behind him.

Steve just groaned and buried his face in his hands, tuning them out. In that moment, he couldn't remember why he'd wanted _another_ team who could poke their noses in his business.

And then Bucky smiled at him, and Bruce said something that had everyone else dissolve into laughter, and he was certain that he was the luckiest person in the world.

"So, any idea what you're going to do with it yet?" Tony asked, pulling his attention back to the morons he called his friends.

"I don't know," he replied, a mischievous smile playing on his face. "Maybe I'll take your suggestion and go into part-time matchmaking after all."

As everyone scrambled to tell him why listening to Tony would be the worst idea he had ever had, he smiled. Yes, he was _definitely_ the luckiest person in the world.

* * *

><p><strong>AN: So, I'm finally done with this. It ended up taking the better part of two months due to the stubbornness of a certain American-themed super-soldier, but I managed.  
>I hope you guys like this! Please don't forget to drop a review on your way out - I'd love to hear what you guys thought about it! :)<strong>


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